According to the environmental journalist Lucy Siegle, most women
now buy half their bodyweight annually in clothes. The writer's new
book, To Die For: Is Fashion Wearing Out the World? (￡12.99, Fourth
Estate), states that the average female invests in 62lb of clothing
each year, has upwards of 20 garments hanging in her wardrobe that she
has never worn and owns four times the amount today than she did in
1980.
When a story written by Siegle for the Daily Mail to
publicise the book was published at the end of last month, and then
featured on the newspaper's website, it was met if not quite with howls
of derision, then with a healthy dose of scepticism. Perhaps she's
touched a nerve.
Siegle's figures are based on research
conducted at Cambridge University into textile imports as opposed to
sales, it was argued, and the two do not necessarily tally. It's safe
to say, though, that any half-viable manufacturer is unlikely to
over-estimate their fabric requirements on a grand scale – that is,
throw away large amounts of investment – and stay in business for very
long.
Equally contentious appeared to be the fact that women
weigh approximately 124lb (8st 12lb) in the first place. Given that we
are consistently informed that most of us are sized somewhere between a
UK 14 and 16 this seems on the light side. The loaded nature of issues
concerning both bodyweight and wardrobe expenditure make it far from
surprising that this, in particular, saw eyebrows raised. Still, it's
just an evocative gimmick, surely, and the principle behind it – that
is, we buy a huge amount of clothing – holds water.
With this
in mind, there's more. Women are expected to spend ￡133,640 in a
lifetime on fashion. In 2007, three pairs of jeans were sold each
second. Between 2001 and 2005,Back again is the
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edhardyshirts online. the price of individual items dropped by 14 per cent. And so forth.
Such
facts and figures, for all Siegle's diligence – which is considerable –
are unlikely to be wholly representative: statistics are statistics
and the way in which we choose to digest them is clearly subjective.
Having said that, we only have to look around us to see that there are
more clothes and accessories available to buy both on the high street
and in more upscale shopping destinations than ever. And we only have
to observe the shopping patterns of colleagues, friends and family to
know that, to varying degrees, we must be doing our bit to consume them.
That much is clear.
But why?
For her part, Siegle is
most vocal in the first place about the culture of celebrity
endorsement. Until very recently,Blasted and distressed for the perfect
rock star look, these comfortable
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are ready to roll with your weekend rotation. she claims, we were only
interested in what celebrities wore on the red carpet or to a film
premiere. Now, though,Childs' collection of about 600 pairs of
livedoorshirts is on display at the Yakima Valley Museum for the rest of this year. we are obsessed with their off-duty wardrobes too.
That
is also true but celebrity endorsement has been around since the court
of Marie Antoinette, the difference today is that far more of us can
actually afford to emulate our idols, or we think we can at least – our
bankers, struggling with burgeoning debt, might beg to differ. Where
we used to look on in spellbound wonder at Marlene Dietrich's Dior gown
at the Oscars, say, or Grace Kelly's Hermès bag, and even at Madonna's
Jean Paul Gaultier conical bra, we would never have expected, or even
necessarily wanted, to own them.
Until the turn of the 21st
century this was a purely aspirational and entertaining activity, the
stuff of dreams and/or nightmares depending on how we chose to look at
it. Now, though, with budget copies of any outfit worn by even the
least interesting young hopeful proliferating and images of the same
published everywhere from online to the pages of newspapers and
magazines, far more of us believe we can actually live that dream.
The
rise and rise of Asos.com is a case in point. It may have cast off its
original tag – As Seen On Screen – and have an eye on a more credible
and far-reaching position in the market but the premise the business
was originally founded on remains the same.
More significantly,
Asos, like all other online shopping destinations, allows us to
purchase clothing at the mere click of a button, making poring over a
garment in a store, returning on two or even three separate occasions
to consider just how much we want or need it redundant. Neither do we
save up for clothing the way previous generations did, appreciating
them far more just for that. Shopping for clothes is now a practice as
undiscerning as many of the products we shop for. And that is
regrettable.
Blame the so-called democratisation of fashion if
you will. Images straight from the catwalk – and the inevitable
fast-fashion copies that go with them – are also everywhere. Formerly,
the designer fashion industry was a closely regulated concern – as late
as the mid-1990s, all photographers at the international collections
were accredited journalists required to sign forms limiting the use of
any images to prevent plagiarism.
And if, since the mid-20th
century, the world's leading couturiers, including Christian Dior and
Coco Chanel, might have been persuaded to sell their patterns to
American department stores, any buyers paid good money for them and
their execution and distribution was closely guarded with a view to
protecting exclusivity. Today, the shows are an all-singing,
all-dancing, all-blogging, all-tweeting media circus.Buy christian art
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online. And consumers can "get the Marc Jacobs look" or whatever, only
hours after the designer's biannual New York show has taken place, and
this despite the fact that the prototype, which is high-end and
therefore takes longer to produce and is necessarily more expensive,
won't go on sale until almost half a year later.
The new Prada
shoe, the make-up at Balenciaga, the tights at Chanel, are common
knowledge before the first designer outfit has even made it on to the
runway. And where such material used to be seen as news – admittedly
not necessarily hard news, but news nonetheless – the purpose of which
was to show people what they might, or might not, like to wear six
months down the line, it now fuels a consumer habit that might be
described as full-blown addiction.
The effect of this has been
huge across the board. If we accept that it is now almost impossible
for designers to copyright their ideas – and much has been written
about the time and money involved in tracking down and removing
everything from catwalk-inspired pieces deemed too close for comfort to
blatant counterfeiting – then they are forced to take action in other
ways. And so they have.
We may not have the budget to pay for a
straight-off-the-runway, so-called seasonal statement piece, but we
can and do buy designer sunglasses, bags, hosiery, shoes or even just
an itsy-bitsy keyring/mobile-phone trinket to go with them. And just as
the high street famously turns over clothing at breakneck speed with
new drops appearing in any self-respecting fashion store on a weekly
basis, so designers too have upped the ante with the aforementioned
small-accessories market booming and pre-collections, cruise
collections, all-year-round classic collections, multiple diffusion
lines and more freshening up of the formerly proud-to-be-impenetrable
designer stores.